


Short n Sweet (and a Thief)

by DoveFanworks



Series: Borrower!Prom [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Borrower!AU, Gen, borrower!Prompto, yeah you got me again Ghibli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-07 17:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19474216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoveFanworks/pseuds/DoveFanworks
Summary: The biggest and most important rule that all borrowers were supposed to follow was to never be seen by a bean. And he got that, really he did. Beans were huge, loud, and super, super dangerous. So yeah, not really surprising that his kind stayed well out of sight of them, only taking tiny, unimportant things that most would never even notice going missing. He totally got it.But get this, the television was the single greatest invention humans had ever made.





	Short n Sweet (and a Thief)

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo...  
> Em and I both rewatch Ghibli's 'The Secret World of Arrietty' and were completely reminded of just how charming the entire concept of borrowers were. And here we are;v;  
> Naberiie and I both plan to write little drabbles for this soft AU, not necessarily with the same exact verse each time (different characters may be borrowers or humans in each piece). But y'all know by this point that I just love to single poor Prompto out so that's where Imma start>:3c  
> This AU, in general, is planned to be pretty soft and focus on friendship dynamics and humour (at least in my ones) so there hopefully won't be too much angst here... hopefully.

The biggest and most important rule that all borrowers were supposed to follow was to never be seen by a bean. And he got that, really he did. Beans were huge, loud, and super, super dangerous. So yeah, not really surprising that his kind stayed well out of sight of them, only taking tiny, unimportant things that most would never even notice going missing. He totally got it.

But get this, the television was the single greatest invention humans had ever made. Look, when there was no one home for the vast majority of the day how could he truly be expected to just sit around in a dark, boring hole in the wall? Impossible. Completely unrealistic.

So, almost every day, when the dark-haired bean that (he assumed) owned the apartment left for whatever it was school was, he would slip the loose tile free from the grout of the wall above the kitchen bench and slink out into the empty home. Living in the walls did have its perks. With the amount of cabling that ran throughout the fancy place he had pretty much free reign to go wherever he liked, climbing them like ivy vines when he needed to go upwards.

The entries to his dusty, dark world were scattered like mice holes throughout every room of the apartment, though far more tidy, and with openings only he knew how to find. The tile in the kitchen was definitely his dodgiest doorway yet, but the scraps of leftover food it allowed him to scavenge were well worth the risk.

The taller, bespectacled bean that usually turned up every few days, aside from being the most terrifying entity he’d maybe ever seen, made the most incredible things he had ever tasted. While he didn’t tend to leave the food out when he was done cooking, cleaning up meticulously once he was done, the guy that actually lived here (Noct, if overheard conversations were correct) was not nearly as clean. Maybe he was just forgetful, though Prompto leaned more towards thinking he was just perpetually tired, but whenever he picked at the leftovers he usually then left them sitting out for hours. Hell, half the time he didn’t even bother to clean anything up, which understandably frustrated the taller bean (Specs? Iggy? This one seemed to have a lot of names) but it sure as shit made his life easier.

So, as far as life for a borrower went, he had it pretty good. He supposed there had to be some upsides to living so completely alone. At the very least there was no one to tell him how stupid he was for coming out in the open of a bean’s house.

Whatever, this weird show about nightmares in human kitchens was well worth the risk of getting crushed, maimed, eaten, or any other awful, awful way his brain could imagine on how he would end if he was ever caught.

Prompto huffed, rolling his eyes to himself at the thought. Yeah right, he may have been more reckless than most borrowers, but he was still more than capable of outwitting a couple of lumbering beans. He shook the thoughts from his head, checking the time on the menu of the gigantic television screen mounted on the wall. Pleased to see he still had a couple of hours left before the dark-haired human returned, he set both hands on the channel button of the huge remote beside him and, shoving down with all his upper body strength, flicked back for the next episode of Kitchen Nightmares.

~~~~~~~~~~

Prompto grunted awake at the sound of a raised voice, squirming in confusion in his nest of sewn together fabric scraps, rolling over with a mumble of annoyance and snuggling down into the puffy square of an abandoned quilt he had pilfered from a forgetful old lady in the floor below them. (Hauling it back had maybe been the biggest endeavor of his life but fuck had it been worth it. And hey, it wasn’t like the woman would’ve noticed, he’d yanked it out of an entire basket of the cushy things.)

“Noctis, please, the power bill has spiked quite alarmingly over the last couple of months, are you certain you haven’t been leaving lights on when you leave?”

Prompto sniffed, wrinkling his nose when the ever-present dust made him wonder if a sneeze was coming. Time to do some cleaning again.

“I already told you, no I haven’t!”

Gods, did beans really have to be so damn loud? He groaned and pulled his patchy, mismatched blanket over his head.

“This is a sizable rise, can you think of anything that-“

“I said no Specs! I haven’t been doing anything different and I haven’t been leaving any of the lights on, have you thought that maybe it could be an issue with the wiring or something, cause it sure as hell isn’t me.”

Prompto rolled back over, shuffling his head back out so only his eyes were uncovered, peering through the dim light of his makeshift bedroom as though he could see through the wall to where the two humans were arguing. He had no idea what a ‘power bill’ was, but it sure seemed to have Specs upset.

He caught the muffled but very familiar sound of said man sighing.

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “if not then I have no clue what the issue could be, but if it is a fault then we’ll have to call an electrician in to try and find it.”

He doubted he’d have missed Noct’s answering groan if he was three whole floors below them. He didn’t really know what an electrician was either, but he supposed they must have been annoying from the sound of it. He truly had no idea why beans would even bring such people into their homes then, but he guessed this ‘electrician’ would offer a service of some kind. Like Iggy coming over just to make really good food.

Humans were strange, but hey, not like he was complaining when he could benefit from practically all of it. Prompto lost interest as the conversation steered back into more mundane things, and to his relief back to a bearable volume, and he quickly dozed off once again to their distant rumblings, the taller beans lilting voice lulling him back to sleep.

“I’m still concerned about these power spikes Noct… call me paranoid as you wish, but I’m going to set up a motion camera in the kitchen, just for a few days to ease my mind, you can unplug it once you’re home.”

“Whatever.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The next day was a Saturday, and Prompto listens to Noct’s off-key singing from the shower while he’s head down, ass up in the open box of cookies left out on the bench. The messily stitched bag slung over his shoulder was already almost full with scavenged crumbs, but Iggy baked them so rarely that he sure as hell was going to make the most of it.

The singing was muffled, and not exactly what he would call good, but kind of catchy, and he found himself bobbing along as he heaved biscuits out the way and blindly felt around the bottom of the box.

For what it was worth, it was kind of charming.

~~~~~~~~~~  
Weekends suck because, nine times out of ten, Noct doesn’t leave the house.

On Sunday Prompto climbs the thick, tangled wires into the roof, scampering to where the light in the living room juts through the floor. He wriggles the loose fitting until it pops free and slips through into the marbled, ceramic bowl beneath, hanging down so he landed almost silently, still unnoticed by the bean in question, snoring on the couch below.

He never really gave much thought to how humans decorated their homes, it wasn’t like he lived in the actual nice parts of the place after all, but he was at least grateful that this one at least seemed to favour lots of polished, opaque marble. So, with the light switched off in the middle of the day, he didn’t have to worry about his silhouette being seen from below.

It allowed him to lay down and poke his head over the lip so he could watch the tv, still playing some show he didn’t recognize. Noct snorted, rolling sleepily so he was facing the screen, but didn’t wake further.

He slept well into the afternoon and Prompto let himself phase out into the show, which appeared to be about people rescuing animals and boy did cats look far more lovable when they weren’t actually anywhere near him.

When the sun began to dip dangerously close to the point in the afternoon when Specs usually turned up, Prompto forced himself to get up, stretching his stiff arms before climbing back through the hole into the roof, sliding the fitting back into place behind him.

Later he listened to the muted sounds of Iggy cooking while he fruitlessly wiped the dust from every surface of his ramshackle home with a scrap of old rag. He knew it would be back in a couple of days, but he could only do the best with the materials he had at hand. It only sometimes made his chest hurt with the longing for life back with his parents, in their comfortable, put together little home under the floorboards of an old house in the suburbs.

He still had no idea what got them in the end, he doubted he ever would.

The rest of the night passed with something soft and melancholy settled over his head, not enough to truly sully it, but enough to make him turn in early after cramming a few more cookie crumbs down his throat. He listened to the hushed voices of the two beans beyond the wall, and wondered if he would ever have someone else to talk to again.

~~~~~~~~~~

There was something new in the kitchen on Monday.

Noct had long since left for school when he slid the loose tile in the kitchen aside and slid down to the bench. He did his habitual scan of the gigantic room, finding nothing out of the ordinary until he looked past the stovetop to the other end of the long, shiny counter he stood upon.

An odd, glossy white box sat at the far end, pointed off towards the television and the empty couches, a long black cable stretched like a tail from the back of it to plug into the wall.

Prompto tilted his head, blinking curiously at the thing. He had never seen anything like it before, nor did he have any idea what it did. A thing to help with cooking perhaps? Like all the stuff that already filled the bean’s kitchen (namely the terrifying array of glittering knives mounted on the wall) weren’t enough.

Throwing caution to the wind, he scampered over to investigate it. It didn’t exactly look dangerous after all, and if it was anything like the television it may well be yet another thing that he could “borrow”, as it were.

He slowed to a stop beside the small box. Well, small to a bean, it was still almost as tall as him. He leant up to look at the top, noting there were only a couple of black buttons to break up the white, before he wandered around the back to examine where the cable plugged into it. Where there were cables there was usually electricity of some kind, so it had to do something.

He wandered slowly around to the opposite side, stepping carefully over the chord and tracing his fingers over the smooth, cool sides, finding it much the same as what he had already seen, before continuing to the front of the strange device. And at last found something mildly interesting.

The front face was almost filled with a large, black circle, and when he peered closer he could see it was actually a glass casing, with more round sheets of glass and metal inside. He cocked his head as he dropped into a crouch before it, narrowing his eyes and leaning closer in an attempt to discern what exactly the purpose of was.

He leapt back with a yelp when it made a whirring sound, the mechanisms twisting and twitching forwards and backwards behind the dark glass. Prompto swallowed, eyes wide, one hand raised defensively, but with another soft hum, the box seemed to settle again.

“Ok,” he mumbled, drawing out the word, “do you like, make music or something?”

The box remained silent.

Prompto cautiously pushed himself back up, shifting a hand to check that the sewing pin he had borrowed from the old lady downstairs was still firmly sheathed through the fabric of his shirt, finding some small relief when his fingers met the cool metal. He crouched once again before it, waiting for a response.

When none came, he tentatively reached out a hand and tapped the glass twice with a knuckle. The box buzzed and whirred, the glass circles rotating and extending, before once again settling. Prompto blinked slowly.

“What is the point of you?” He asked it.

The box remained silent.

“Beans sure make some weird stuff,” he grumbled to himself, pushing himself back to his feet and wandering back from whence he had come, ignoring the buzzing sounds this time, his interest in it lost. Nothing edible, and nothing entertaining, so it didn’t concern him in the least.

He trotted back to the stove top, pulling the incredibly basic rappelling gear he had fashioned from a gleaming metal hook (found beneath Noct’s enormous bed) and a length of string (once again from the generous old lady downstairs) from his belt. The easiest way down to the ground from the kitchen bench was to catch the hook in the edge of the stove, climb his way down, and then whip the hook loose again. He had it down to a fine art at this point, not to brag.

And then he could use it again to get on top of the couch. His gaze flicked to the glowing green numbers of the time in the stove’s digital display. Perfect, just in time for those weird, yet oddly hypnotic, things called ‘infomercials’ to start.

~~~~~~~~~~

On the other side of the city, Ignis’ phone pinged with a message. When he opened the attachment, he only narrowly avoided scalding himself with his spilled tea.


End file.
